Jeannie E. Roberts

Jeannie E. Roberts

BIO:Jeannie E. Roberts has authored four poetry collections and one children's book. Her most recent collection is The Wingspan of Things, a poetry chapbook (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). She is also the author of Romp and Ceremony, a full-length poetry collection (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush, a full-length poetry collection (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature ofit All, a poetry chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is the author and illustrator of Let's Make Faces!, a children's book dedicated to her son (author-published, 2009). Her work appears in books, online magazines, print journals and anthologies, including A Year of Being Here, An Ariel Anthology, Bards Against Hunger, Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Festival of Language's Festival Writer, Literary Mama, Misty Mountain Review, Portage Magazine, Quill and Parchment, Red CedarReview, Silver Birch Press, Sky Island Journal, The Paddock Review, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Volume One's Local Lit, Yellow Chair Review and elsewhere. Born in Minneapolis, she lives in an inspiring setting near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where she writes, draws and paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings.

Nature of it All, Finishing Line Press, 2013, $14.00 plus shipping(Orders may be placed through the author or Finishing Line Press at here)

Let's Make Faces!, Rhyme the Roost Books, 2009, $10 plus shipping and handling(Orders may be placed through the author or Volume One's local store here)

Poetry

The Punctuation of Ferns

Like snail shellsnestled in crooksof question marks,

fiddleheads coil,cap fronds, withinponds of noonday sun.

Spirals unfurl, respondwithout question, rollout the answer, clarify

meaning in the fleetingnature of time; onlyto rest, repose, after

accentuating glens,underlining gullies,hyphenating ditches

with dashes of green,upon making their mark,completing this seasonal

sentence, before fadingto full stop and finishingwith periodic ending points.

From The Nature of It All (Finishing Line Press, 2013)

My Son's Tattoos

I.Ammonite lobes and saddles coilnear the scroll of fronds. Trillium kisses pulpitwith point of petal. Agate lines its banded path;pieces fracture, disperse withincircular orbit. Leaves drift, then settlebeneath the repetition of squares; fractalsdisplay their self-similar pattern. From shoulderto forearm, the cosmic order of tats.

II.Mommy, what's the name of this flower?It's the great white trillium, I answer.Notice their whorl of three petals, white,pristine, but never pick them; we must honortheir life. We step to find a jack-in-the-pulpit, then a fern. Stones next.Agates. Along the river, we skip rocks.My brother walks with us; he speaksof plants and animals, fossils,constellations, his esteem for scienceand our natural world. We listen.

III.Pristinely rendered echoes of walks and talks,water and woodlands, tribe and tradition,my son's arm depicts his lineage. Patternsof memory, emblematic markings of originindelibly etched, form the whorl of his story,the greatness of his fingerprint, the honor in his ink.